Five Times Jesse Pinkman Met A Companion (The Breaking Who Remix)
by Selena
Summary: Jesse Pinkman keeps running into past and future time travellers. Or they keep running into him. Sometimes they even bring the Doctor along.
1. Martha Jones

**Disclaimer**: _Breaking Bad_ characters and situations owned by Vince Gilligan, _Doctor Who_ and related fandoms owned by the mighty BBC.

**Thanks to**: Astrogirl, who went above and beyond the call of duty with post-posting virtual handholding, too.

**Timeline**: *takes a deep breath* Chapter I takes place between episodes _The Sound of Drums_ and _Last of the Time Lords_ in _Doctor Who_, shortly pre-pilot for _Breaking Bad_; Chapter II takes place in early season 3 for _Breaking Bad_, post _The Runaway Bride_ and pre _Partners in Crime_ for _Doctor Who_; chapter III is set during _Torchwood: Miracle Day_ and directly after the series finale _Felina_ for _Breaking Bad_; chapter IV takes place after _The Green Death_ and before _The Time Warrior_ in _Doctor Who_ (see also: UNIT Dating Controversy), and mid season 3 of _Breaking Bad_; chapter V takes place shortly after _The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith_ on _The Sarah Jane Adventures_ and at an indeterminate point post _Felina_ for _Breaking Bad_.

**Warnings**: references to canonical violence in all shows concerned; Jesse's equally canonical cursing habits

**Author's Note:** Originally written for the Remix 2014 ficathon, based on the story "Welcome to the Neighbourhood" by Sega Barrett.

* * *

_**I. Martha Jones (during the Year That Wasn't)**_

Jesse had been high when the Master eliminated ten percent of the human population. He had assumed it was a bad trip, nothing worse than that, and it took until the next day to sink in that the Death Star had really arrived, or the Borg had; Skinny Pete and Badger weren't able to be clearer than that. The British Prime Minister turning out to be an alien was about the only thing about this whole nightmare that made sense. All the best bad guys had British accents, after all.

Jesse soon lost the taste for sci fi jokes. So many people dead: His parents, and now the last thing he'd ever remember about them would be his father saying how disappointed he was and his mother silently crying. Jake, who'd been with them. Wendy, who he'd lost his virginity to when she'd just started turning tricks for meth. But wouldn't you know it, his stick-in-the-ass chemistry teacher from high school, Mr. White, was among the survivors, him and his ball-busting wife. Jesse ended up in the same shelter with them and their son. The worst thing about that was that Mr. White wouldn't shut up about how scientifically impossible the Master's mere existence was. But then he found a new subject to be angry about, because as it turned out some of old friends or business partners or enemies of his were among the companies chosen to provide the Master with resources. Maybe they didn't even want to collaborate, and just complied because they didn't want to be among the next ten percent of the human population to die, but Mr. White decided then and there he'd start the Resistance, Albuquerque branch. It would have been funny, except it wasn't, not at all, not with the Toclafane, those spiky metal balls flying around and talking in their eerie childish voices, there to dispense death. When Jesse saw one of them slicing a kid in half because she simply hadn't understood an order, he decided he didn't care whether Mr. White was on an ego trip or some vendetta or whatever. He joined the resistance then and there.

As it turned out, Mr. White was actually good at coming up with crazy plans that actually worked. He even came up with a formula that made the metal around a Toclafane melt. Unfortunately, it melted everything else inside, too, so they couldn't find out what was inside those death balls. Mrs. White first thought this wouldn't achieve anything, but then her son lost his crutches and wasn't deemed worthy to get new ones by what passed for medical care now, and then she came up with a method to finance the resistance that was the weirdest thing so far. Maybe, Jesse later thought, it was his fault, because he'd complained about the lack of meth or at least some weed once too often. Or maybe it was her sister, because Mrs. White's brother-in-law, who'd died in the first decimation, had been a DEA Agent, and the sister wouldn't shut up about him, either. In any case, Mrs. White decided that the one thing you could be sure off in a dictatorship was that people would want to do drugs now more than ever. And Mr. White, as it turned out, knew how to make them. So here they were, a few months later: the best financed Resistance Cell in the US. It was awfully shady, but it worked.

Then _she_ came. The one they kept hearing about. At first, it was just a rumour, and everyone thought it was a made up tale, but later people heard from people who'd actually spoken to her: Martha Jones, who walked the Earth and knew a way to defeat the Master. "Then why hasn't she done so already?" Mr. White asked, and maybe that was just Mr. White being cranky about someone stealing his thunder, but Jesse was wondering the same thing. He also wondered whether this Martha Jones chick would turn out to be some double agent. In the movies he recalled from what seemed another life now, there usually was a bad girl in the service of the evil overlord bent on seducing the good guy who ended up recruiting her for the cause, or something. Since Mr. White was a married man, Jesse decided he was ready to sacrifice himself and be the Resistance member to welcome Martha Jones.

She was a babe, that much was true. But she definitely didn't have seduction in mind. Five minutes of conversation, and she'd figured Jesse was using. As it turned out, she'd been a doctor before the Master's invasion.

"So are you going to lecture me or what?" Jesse asked, because he'd gotten the "this is stupid and self destructive and maybe we have to sell this stuff to keep the operation going, but we're not using it!" speech from the Whites already.

"No," she said, and her big brown eyes were filled with such sadness that made something in him flinch. "I just think it's sad, what the Master is doing to us. You're bright, you're funny, and you obviously care what happens to people. You must have been great in your old life. And now he's reduced you to doing drugs to cope with the hell he's unleashed."

Jesse looked at her and wondered how she could still be so naive, given all that she must have experienced, if even half of the stories were true. He opened his mouth to make some quip about how he hadn't needed the Master to discover meth, thanks, and now at least the quality of the stuff was better. Or some more cutting remark about how _she_ financed her crossing the world anyway, and whether she ever wondered how her helpers did. But she kept _looking_ at him as if she really saw someone who could have been, well, awesome. Suddenly he imagined meeting her in Albuquerque before the invasion. But that was stupid; he'd have made a pass and she'd have thought he was some stupid meth head. She certainly wouldn't have been impressed by the old him.

"Come on," he said abruptly. "We're meeting the others on one of the Navajo reservations. You said you wanted to talk to as many as possible, right?"

She nodded. That night, he heard her talk of the Doctor, and explain her plan. It sounded completely insane. But Jesse listened, and thought that maybe, just maybe, it was worth trying, and if it worked, then he himself could try to be that guy she had thought he'd been. After all, there was no way Mr. White would want to produce drugs in normal circumstances, just no way, so the good quality meth would be gone anyhow.

He'd try to be whom she'd seen in him, Jesse decided. If he survived, and her plan worked. Oh hell, he'd try anyway. There were worse ways to spend the potential last months of his life.

He kept on trying until Martha Jones confronted the Master, time reversed itself and everyone but the few who'd been on board the carrier Valiant forgot the year that never happened. But Martha Jones did not forget any of the people she'd met, and that was to have consequences.


	2. Donna Noble

**_II. Donna Noble(no longer a Runaway Bride)_**

After her father's death, Donna's grandfather had taken her aside and told her: "Your travelling. Do it now!"

She'd wanted to see the world ever since losing a spider-preferring bastard of a husband and gaining a look at the beginning of Earth for Christmas. But shortly after the holidays were over and the debts over the wedding paid, her father had been diagnosed with cancer, and after that, Donna would have felt like the most heartless daughter on the planet if she'd left her parents alone. So she'd been there with them every step on the way, with her mother's father moving in to help them during the last weeks of her father's life, and not leaving again. But Gramps had always known her better than anyone, and when he'd said "Do it _now_!", Donna had felt that if she didn't, she'd never leave Chiswick at all.

Not that she was having second thoughts about having declined the offer of her skinny alien. She had liked him, but he'd scared her, too, and besides, beautiful as the sight of the stars and the forming Earth had been, that part had involved giant spiders, too. Who knew how many other giant insects were waiting out there? No, it had been the right thing, turning down that invitation to travel the universe.

Definitely the right thing.

Well, most probably it had been. She did want to travel, though. So she used up the money that would have gone into the honeymoon with Lance and went to Egypt for two weeks. The Pyramids were impressive, sure, except for the part where they weren't in the desert like Donna had thought they'd be but practically next door to the city, and there were so many English tourists around her that she might as well have remained in London. Returning, she started to work as a temp again, looking for jobs that involved travelling. She lucked out; a company she'd worked for before needed someone ready to go to New Mexico for a conference on short notice because the personal assistants who were supposed to had succumbed to the flu, every one of them. So here she was, assisting some mid-level executive of Madrigal Electromotive GmbH, which translated into taking notes at conferences and sharing a hotel room with the other temp who'd come with them on the journey. If she was honest, Donna had expected something different, because Madrigal felt a bit like H.C. Clements to her, not quite right, a bit fishy. Maybe, just maybe, she had expected running into the Doctor again. Not that she wanted to, she told herself, but she'd been aware of the possibility. Well, so far there was no sign of anything untoward, and she and the other temp were even given the time to make a trip to admire the scenery around Albuquerque with a rented American car and a sat nav. Except everyone was driving on the wrong side of the road. It was maddening.

"Bloody colonials," Donna muttered when she stopped for petrol after a near miss of a car crash. She didn't want to admit her heart was beating faster. She'd faced being dumped for a giant spider and nearly sacrificed to said spider's kids; she could deal with American traffic. She just needed something to eat and drink, and one thing about Americans, their gas stations always offered junk food as well. Patiently waiting her turn, she overheard the young man in front of her chatting up the Navajo girl behind the counter. At least, that's what Donna initially thought he was doing. She thought about Lance, how she'd loved him and thought she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him before finding out the truth, how she thought he'd liked her despite the fact there were younger, prettier girls at H.C. Clements. That young man in front of her looked quite dishy, truth to be told, and he was focused on the Navajo girl, despite her being overweight, to the exclusion of everything else. _So there_ are _men who are able to look beneath the surface_, Donna thought, and just started to feel sentimental, getting a bit closer so she could overhear more, when what the young man actually said started to sink in.

He wasn't chatting the Navajo girl up. He was peddling drugs to her.

_That bastard_, Donna thought, and her blood started to boil. Her no longer Huon-particle dosed blood. He really _was_ just like Lance, the real Lance, not the handsome guy Donna thought she'd fallen for but the scum who'd been dosing her with Huon particles all this time on behalf of some Spider Empress.

When the young man finished his pitch and left, Donna hastily slammed down her junk food at the desk, said, "I'll be back in a moment" and rushed after him.

"Oi," she called. "Not so fast, buster."

He stopped and looked around, giving her a look somewhere between bemusement and a grin.

"Just what do you think you were doing there?" Donna demanded. "Making that poor girl fall for you while fattening her up for the slaughter?"

"That's none of your..." he began, and something in her snapped. Because of the gruesome way Lance had died on Christmas Eve, she hadn't allowed herself to be angry at him anymore, and then her father's illness and death had taken all her emotional energy anyway. But the repressed rage and disappointment Lance's betrayal had left were still there, it seemed, and before she could stop herself, she slapped the handsome young man in his lily white utterly un-Lance-like face.

"She's not your plaything, scum! She's not there so you can get your jollies by stuffing her full of poison!"

He stared at her, one cheek already beginning to show the red marks her fingers had left. It had been a most satisfying whack.

"She doesn't have to take it, does she," he said tonelessly. "So what now, you're going to call the cops, lady?"

Donna should. That would mean one drug dealer put away. And then what? The girl would probably get fired, if American bosses were anything like English ones, whether or not she intended to actually consume the chemicals the young man had given her. She'd be unemployed, and might not find a job again soon. Maybe she had family at home, maybe she didn't, but Donna knew how humiliating it felt to be unable to earn your own money even if your parents were willing and able to support you. _Why can't you get a good job, like Nerys_, she heard her mother Sylvia ask in the back of her mind. "Or at least keep a paying one for longer than a few months."

"That wouldn't be good for her," Donna said grudgingly. "Even if you deserve it."

"How the hell would you know?" the young drug dealer retorted. "You don't know shit about me!"

She looked at him. He had wide blue eyes, short blond hair and wore a hoodie at least two sizes too large for him. The drugs he was selling couldn't result in much profit, it seemed. Or he was an addict himself. But that was beside the point.

"No, I don't," she said. "But I know it's not right to make other people suffer so you can be better off, and that was what you were doing, mate."

He blinked. "Yeah, well, that's how the world works. You either treat others like shit, or you end up under someone's boot yourself."

She remembered Lance again, mocking her for having been so stupid, for talking about unimportant things, getting on his nerves so much. Saying she deserved what he'd had planned for her. But the memory didn't make her angry anymore.

"No, it's not," she said sadly. "You just think that so you don't have to feel bad about what you do. About who you are."

Now he was the one sounding furious.

"I know exactly who I am. I'm the bad guy. I just don't care anymore. "

How old was he, anyway? At least ten years younger than Donna herself was, but definitely not a teenager anymore, which meant he was too old to play at being a supervillain as a type of adolescent posturing. Did he really believe what he just said?

"Listen," she said. "I've met bad guys. Well, one of them was a bad girl. Woman. Spiderwoman. But we did meet. She was an Empress, too. And her children were going to eat the world. I also met the man who stopped them. He was really skinny and talked all the time, except when he killed them. He killed them all, this space empress spider and her children, and he just stood there and did it and was silent and he was scarier than that spider by a half because he _could_ do that and I knew it wasn't the first time he'd done something like that. If you think I'm impressed by some kid who's peddling drugs at an overworked girl at a gas station, you've got another thing coming."

"You're crazy, yo," he said, but the fury in his words was gone and was replaced by confusion and even a tiny bit of fascination. He wasn't wrong, Donna decided. Yes, the experience had been scary, but also wondrous. And it did seem crazy, now, to have exchanged that for a life where busting drug dealers at a New Mexico gas station was the height of excitement.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Jesse Pinkman," he replied without thinking about it, apparently still disconcerted about what she'd said, and Donna decided this was probably the truth.

"Well, Jesse Pinkman, I'm Donna Noble, and you think about what I've said. And if you come near that girl again with your drugs, I'm going to know, and then you'll wish the spiders had eaten the world, trust me. If, on the other hand, you want to do something useful with your life, you could try coming to Britain and help me investigate crazy events. Because I've just decided that this is what I'm going to do. I should have done it before already, but even if you've made the wrong decision, it's never too late for making the right one."

With that, she turned around and went back inside the gas station. "They're never worth it, love, and nor is that stuff," she said to the Navajo girl and paid for her food and drink. The girl flushed, but didn't ask what Donna meant. When Donna stepped outside into the hot, dry air again, the young man was gone.


	3. Jack Harkness

**_III. Jack Harkness (during Miracle Day)_**

Jesse had lost track of the day, month, in a way even the year while he'd been imprisoned. When Mr. White showed up, it could have been anything between a month or a decade after they'd last seen each other, when Mr. White had told him the truth about Jane. Jesse wouldn't have known. He only knew that he was alive now, Todd was dead, so were the rest of the fuckers who'd kept him prisoner, and so, at last, was Mr. White, whose way of enchaining Jesse never had been the literal sort. That was more important than the date.

Except it wasn't, because the date, as it turned out, became all important. People began to refer to it as "Miracle Day". A day in which nobody died, nobody in New Mexico, nobody in the U.S., nobody in the whole damm world, no matter what had happened to them, even if you'd pumped enough lead into them so there weren't any inner organs left. They didn't die the next day, either. Or the next. Or the next. Jesse was in a restroom at some gas station retching his guts out when he first heard and realized what it meant. The Nazis were still alive.

So was Mr. White.

Maybe that was the biggest laugh of all. Mr. White getting his death-by-cancer sentence handed to him had been what started everything, and he'd made this big production out of his death, taking Jack's gang with him, dying before the cops could arrive. Except not. As it turned out, Mr. White couldn't die any more than anyone else could, and now he was going to stand trial for his crimes. People on tv, on the radio, on the internet, they didn't talk about anything else. Except, of course, the Miracle.

Jesse knew it was only a matter of time before he himself got arrested, whether or not Mr. White had told the cops Jesse was still alive. And it wasn't like he was truly free anyway. Not with looking over his shoulder all the time, and waking up, if he fell asleep at all, convinced that Todd was nearby, saying "But Jesse, I thought we were friends" before demonstrating new ways to skin a cat. Besides, now the news brought interviews with the families of the dead from the air plane crash again, and of Drew Sharpe's parents; their losses were on Mr. White, yes, but Jesse knew they were also on him. So he marched into the next sheriff's station he passed and had a hell of a time convincing the cops there he was really Jesse Pinkman, confederate of the infamous criminal mastermind Heisenberg. Eventually, they believed him.

Because Mr. White had managed to get those witnesses killed in prison before, Jesse ended up awaiting trial in a facility outside of New Mexico. He didn't even know where and didn't care. Then some redheaded chick named Jilly Kitzinger showed up, said she represented a large pharmaceutical organization named PhiCorp, and hinted that PhiCorp had enough influence to get Jesse included in the Federal Witness Protection program and thus essentially free.

"Medical needs are exploding, Mr. Pinkman," she finished smoothly. "A man with your expertise might be in great demand. If, that is, you'd be at liberty to work for us."

"Been there, done that, yo," Jesse said tiredly. Mr. White was a sick bastard, literally, but he'd been right about blood money, even if he'd been right for the wrong reasons. And maybe Jesse was the idiot Mr. White had always taken him for, but by now he wasn't a sucker for wannabe kingpins making their pitch at him anymore. And no matter how hot this Jilly Kitzinger person looked, that was essentially what she did.

She turned a bit less subtle then and said he might wish to have access to hospital care and medication for "your associates" soon, because now that no one was dying anymore without, however, healing or getting healthy again, people who in other circumstances _would_ be dead by now would find themselves put in a "new category". Jesse had no idea what that meant except that presumably it was some way of trying to blackmail him into working for her company, and then it dawned on him: she was talking about Mr. White. Whose body had to be thoroughly destroyed by cancer by now, making every breath and every move a torment.

_Good_, Jesse thought, and yet a part of him flinched, imagining that, and he remembered Mr. White lying on him while the bullets ripped apart everyone else in the compound. Apparently thinking that Mr. White deserved all the pain in the world and feeling something burn in his eyes that suspiciously resembled tears wasn't mutually exclusive.

Not that it changed anything. Jesse played dumb and pretended not to understand what Jilly Kitzinger was on about until she left. He remembered Jane's dead body in his arms, the vomit she'd drowned in on her face, and what Mr. White had said about that; tried to cling to that above anything else, but that only made the burning emptiness inside him worse.

One day later he got another visit. This time it was a man. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. When he walked into the visitor's room, Jesse blinked; the man moved with the type of swagger that Jack's guys had only wished they'd been capable of.

"Jesse Pinkman?" the stranger asked, and Jesse couldn't place his accent. It didn't belong to any particular region; in fact, it sounded like the guy was from a Hollywood movie, or had at least learning how to talk English from them. The man smiled, the type of smile Jesse when still peddling his own stuff had given his customers if they'd been female, somewhere between a sale and a come-on. " Captain Jack Harkness."

Jesse eyed him disdainfully.

"Not interested, bitch," he said, deliberately rude. He just wanted to be left alone.

"You should be so lucky," Harkness replied unperturbed. As it turned out, he was here because the Kitzinger woman had been, was curious about what she'd wanted, or more to the point, what this organization named PhiCorp wanted, and implied they were Up To No Good, which wasn't exactly a surprise.

"I don't care," Jesse said.

"Then you can tell me."

To get rid of him, Jesse repeated exactly what Ms. Kitzinger had said, and the "new category" bit made Jack Harkness look worried, the kind of worry that wasn't really surprise as much as it was hearing something confirmed you'd already suspected.

"So what's going on?" Jesse heard himself ask.

Harkness regarded him thoughtfully. "So you _do_ care, hm?"

"No, I don't. I just want this Miracle thing over with so that people can die again," Jesse returned.

"Thinking of anyone in particular?"

Todd, for starters, and everyone else on the compound, that was for sure. Mr. White, yes, but not for the same reason. Jesse remembered nursing his aunt through the final stages of her cancer. That much pain was torture. And nobody deserved unending torture. Not even Mr. White.

He didn't name any of them, though. Instead, he said: "Maybe anyone who wants to," because the truth was that Jesse _had_ thought about testing this Miracle the ultimate way, when the nightmares were particularly vivid. But the idea of walking around with a broken neck afterwards, or slit wrists, or a poisoned stomach, or a bullet in his brain, walking around like that without it ever stopping, that was the most powerful incentive against self harm he'd ever encountered.

"Okay, soldier," Jack Harkness said, eyes by now very sharp. "Time for a jail break."

Which turned out to be the start of a weird but ultimately cool series of maneuvres involving gizmos that made all surveillance tech go kablooey and opened cell doors. Jesse couldn't say why he went along with this, except that there was a tiny part in him which _was_ curious and wanted to know what the hell was going on, and it seemed he'd have a better part of finding out with this Jack Harkness person than stuck in a cell.

A few hours later, somewhere between hiding in a delivery truck full of old laundry and arriving in a Californian motel room, Jesse had pierced together that Jack Harkness , like Ms. Kitzinger, also represented an organization, only his was called Torchwood and seemed to consist of himself, a bossy small brunette who'd taken one look at Jesse and then forced him to eat some bagels while saying "Jack, you idiot" to which Jack said "now how could anyone resist those blue eyes, Gwen?", some disgusted-looking tall black guy named Rex who commented "we're breaking out jailbait now?" and a nice blonde who said, "Rex, we're on the run ourselves" and was named Esther. Rex and Esther were definitely American, and also former CIA, whereas Gwen was a Brit despite sounding nothing like Captain Picard, and none of them seemed to know where Jack Harkness was from, except "not from around here". They all claimed that Phi Corp must have planned the Miracle for some time, though why, other than to sell drugs, they had no idea, and they didn't know how, either.

"They're probably in the empire building business," Jesse said gloomily.

They needed a spy within PhiCorp, and it seemed the original plan had been for Jack to persuade Jesse to accept Jilly Kitzinger's offer and be their mole, not to break him out of jail. Jesse wouldn't have agreed, being well and truly sick of being used, but he asked, nonetheless: "So why didn't you?"

"You were supposed to be some criminal hardass," Rex said, "not a druggie waif. Guess Cary Grant here felt sorry for you."

"No reason to be jealous, Rex," Jack Harkness commented with a grin, and Rex looked, if possible, even more disgusted. Jesse couldn't decide if Jack was gay or just pretending to in order to piss people off. Then again, maybe he was just being a foreigner, despite sounding almost American. Two years and a life time ago, Jesse would have insisted on being tough, yo, a living legend, even. Now he just asked whether Esther could check something for him.

"If they wanted me because I can cook," he said, "they must have asked Mr. White, too."

Jack looked interested, Gwen impressed. "They did," she said. "That's another reason why we wanted to recruit you. Esther found this file that said you were partners."

Jesse felt sick again. He should have known this was all about Mr. White. He'd never be free of him, never. And the worst was, in a way knowing that felt almost like coming home.

"Seems he was supposed to be PhiCorp's poster boy instead of Oswald Danes," Jack said, now watching Jesse intently. "The criminal who'd seen the light due to the Miracle. But the condition he's in by now isn't photogenic enough. So they left him to rot in jail, went for Oswald Danes instead and decided to try you next as a back-up. You, of course, are incredibly photogenic. Made for tv. Except for the part where they missed the fact you're also suicidal."

"Fuck you," Jesse said automatically, without any heat, because he remembered again Jilly Kitzinger's talk about "associates" in need of hospital care. What Harkness said did make sense with what he'd heard. Mr. White had the sharpest mind imaginable, though he could also be dumb about people, but all of that wouldn't change him being in the last stage of cancer, unendingly now, and that really wasn't anything you could show on tv. If that was what PhiCorp wanted. They could still have him cook meth and other drugs in some super lab, but maybe Mr. White was in the been there, done that stage about that, too.

"He'd be really pissed off," Jesse said. "Mr. White. If he knew that they didn't pick him. You could ask him for a plan to destroy them for that alone, if that's what you want. I mean, he'd totally fuck you over while he was at it, but it would probably work."

Gwen murmured something about Mr. White sounding like someone she knew but didn't say anything more understandable. Jack gave her a look.

"We're not looking for any more additions for now," he said blandly. "But thanks for the tip, anyway." Then he asked whether he could drop Jesse off somewhere, since he'd have to try turning Osward Dane against Phi Corp next.

"So you _don't_ want me to spy for you?"

"You're in no condition to infiltrate a kindergarden," Jack Harkness said.

"Then why did you - "

"I'll tell you on the way."

They were sitting in yet another stolen corvette, driving up the Pacific Highway, and Harkness asked Jesse how he liked the car.

"I want answers."

"Don't we all. Look, I have no idea how long the Miracle will last, but I do know someone dying when I see him. And believe, I've seen more than any other person currently on this planet."

Jesse thought about protesting or telling Harkness to fuck off again. But by now, he was past caring.

"Maybe I deserve to," he said, and it felt oddly liberating, saying it out loud. He didn't know whether he meant he deserved it as a punishment or as a reward.

"I wouldn't know about that," Jack said matter-of-factly. "I do know I thought I wanted to die for a long, long while. There were definitely times where I was sure I deserved to. I couldn't. But now I can. And guess what? I want to live."

This didn't make sense. The Miracle ensured nobody could die. And yet Harkness didn't look like he was kidding.

"Did you make your living selling poison?" Jesse asked bitterly. "Did kids die so you could sell _more_?"

Harkness didn't look at him, he looked on the road, jaw clenching, and then he stunned Jesse by replying, in a flat voice and without any shade of irony or exaggaration: "I sold kids _as_ drugs. Does that count?"

Jesse stared at him in disbelief. He didn't ask how that was supposed to have worked. He didn't want to know. But he could tell Jack wasn't joking. Not even a little bit.

"Then how can you want to live?" he asked finally.

"Maybe because someone once took a chance on me. Maybe because I can make a difference for a lot of people who haven't died yet. And maybe because no matter what you do, it feels good to have the wind in your face, the sun on your skin and yours on someone else's. But you know what? It doesn't matter why I want to live, because my reasons can't be yours. You have to find your own. "

"What if I can't?"

Jack Harkness took the next exit from the highway and stopped the car at the inevitable gas station aiming to fleece highway customers.

"Then that's your choice," he said, leaned forward, and kissed Jesse. There had been sex since Jesse had left Andrea, which was something he tried, without much success, to forget. But nobody had kissed him since she had, and certainly no man. Two years ago, he'd have freaked out and tried to punch Harkness. Now, he didn't move. It wasn't an invasive kiss, just a brief contact of lips, downright gentle, which he hadn't expected given Harkness seemed the square-jawed butch type. "But it would be a damn shame," the man said in his unplacable accent, and let Jesse go. "So, _do_ you like the car? Because I don't need it anymore. If Oswald Danes does what I want him to do, it'll be all chaos, and if he doesn't, I'll need a new getaway anyway."

"The car is okay," Jesse said slowly. He remembered what it had felt like, driving away from the compound. He'd definitely wanted to live then. Maybe he still could. At least for a while.


	4. The Brigadier

**_IV. Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (in the 70s, or are it the 80s?)_**

After Jo Grant's marriage, the Doctor left, and the Brigadier expected not to see him for a while. Irritating as the Doctor could be, this prospect worried the Brigadier. The Doctor's TARDIS worked again, and now that Miss Grant had become Mrs. Jones and left UNIT in favour of saving the environment with her Professor, there technically wasn't anything compelling the Doctor to remain on Earth. Not even an alien invasion or another emergency.

Not that the Brigadier wished for a catastrophe to happen. And he trusted his people to handle the more everyday disturbances on their own. But working with the Doctor for years on a regular basis for as long as the Doctor's ship had not been able to leave had transformed the Brigadier's relationship with him, and try as he might, he had to admit he would miss the man if the Doctor were truly gone for good.

He was therefore tremendously relieved to hear the familiar noise of the TARDIS materializing at UNIT headquarters not two months after the wedding. His relief and joy, hidden under a carefully arranged neutral expression, soon were joined by bewilderment when the door of the TARDIS opened and the Doctor was followed by a male individual in jeans and an oversized jumper who exclaimed in an American accent: "What is this, yo? Did you drug me or something? Where are we?"

"We have travelled through time and space," the Doctor said in a clipped voice. "As I announced we would."

"That guy doesn't look like an alien," the American said and pointed straight at the Brigadier, who had folded his arms and was waiting patiently for an explanation. The Doctor harrumphed.

"Brigadier," he said, and only if you knew the Doctor well you could hear the faint undertone of embarassment under the haughty voice, "may I introduce my new assistant? This is Jesse Pinkman. Jesse, this is Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, head of UNIT in Britain. He is going to pay your salary, so a certain amount of civility would be well advised."

The Brigadier was used to the unexpected ranging from lethal plastic daffodils to sentient man-sized lizards to the Doctor's old...enemy the Master, and prided himself on his unflappable attitude, but this news was startling nonetheless. He raised a single eyebrow.

"I am?"

"Miss Grant received financial remuneration," the Doctor pointed out. "So did Dr. Shaw. Now I, of course, do not need your money -"

_No_, the Brigadier thought, _just the assistants, the fast cars and the expensive lab equipment_.

"-But my time with you has taught me that it is unfair to expect a human to live in your society without financial recompense for her or his work. "

"Indeed," the Brigadier commented. "However, both Dr. Shaw and Miss Grant weren't paid by UNIT simply for keeping you company, Doctor. They were paid because they assisted you in a scientific capacity."

Strictly speaking, this had been more true for Liz Shaw, who'd been hired as a scientist before the Doctor was, than for Jo Grant, whose clumsiness in the Doctor's lab was legendary but who'd proven invaluable in aiding him otherwise. But the finer points did not matter; the Brigadier had to justify his budget, and this young American definitely did not look like he'd reveal a Harvard background next. To his surprise, young Pinkman caught the implication at once. He folded his arms in a deliberate imitation of the Brigadier's own posture.

"I have science skills, bitch," he said, sounding downright insulted.

"Jesse is from the 21st century," the Doctor said hastily as the Brigadier's other eyebrow climbed upwards. "And he is indeed familiar with the work in a scientific environment. Your money will be well spent."

Having saved the world repeatedly did grant the Doctor a certain amount of trust on the Brigadier's part, and he had to admit he was feeling more curious than outraged, the American's vocabulary notwithstanding. This particular version of the Doctor was far more prickly and more easily offended than the one the Brigadier had first encountered, and definitely did not suffer fools gladly. For the Doctor to put up with the young man instead of tossing him out on his ear, there had to be reasons, good reasons. The Brigadier decided to wait until he caught the Doctor alone to learn them.

This proved to be unexpectedly difficult. Young Mr. Pinkman offered a running critique and commentary on everything from the UNIT lab equipment, which was deemed "like what we had at school, seriously?" to the miniskirts the female staff was wearing ("oh yeah, that's more like it!") to the cigarette vending machines ("so, like, tobacco is cool with you guys but weed is not? I thought England in this era was Weed Central, or something!"). He demanded something called "internet access" and was indignant to find it was not present, though the Doctor told him the TARDIS had the requisite equipment. At last, an encounter with Sergeant Benton proved felicitous, as the Sergeant was on his way to a poker game in the mess hall and was good natured enough to pick up the Doctor's cue, asking the American to join him.

"Well," the Brigadier said when the two were out of earshot. He left it at that one word.

"Are you aware that the TARDIS is equipped with a telephone which can also receive text messages, among other things?" the Doctor asked. "I wasn't. Since I haven't put it there. Not yet, anyway. The inventory sometimes switches eras. So there will be a telephone, and sometimes it's here already. Brigadier, in these last weeks, I received three different messages from three different people. I haven't met them yet, either, but they seem to be familiar with me. This in itself would be intriguing, but what clinched it for me is that all three were talking about the same person and told me to do something about him. One message says "Dear Doctor, if you ever come to Albuquerque, New Mexico, look up Jesse Pinkman to make sure he didn't become a supervillain, ta, Donna". Then there was one saying "Doctor, if you come through early 21st century New Mexico, please make sure to say hello to a young man named Jesse Pinkman, he did help save the world during the Year That Wasn't, yours, Martha". And lastly, someone named Jack sent a text saying "Doctor, where the hell were you? Never mind, it's a big universe, I know, but do me a favour and check out Jesse Pinkman in these space time coordinates the next time you visit. I don't think he's a fixed point in time, but he sure as hell is a mess in need for someone to give a damn. And you're the man who makes things better - or are you?" Now I don't know why the TARDIS rerouted all three messages to me instead of the version of me they were presumably intended for, but the fact of the matter is that she did. Which makes it both a mystery I intend to solve and a possible emergency that needs taking care of. I don't think a few weeks on UNIT payroll for one man are too much to ask for."

"I assume the Master playing a practical joke on you is a possibility you have already excluded," the Brigadier replied and saw by the glint in the Doctor's eyes that the Doctor hadn't excluded the possibility but would, if anything, welcome another chance to spar with the Master. The Brigadier sighed.

"May I ask what Mr. Pinkman's profession was before you decided to hire him, or rather, let us hire him?"

The Doctor coughed and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "hemanufacturedchemicals".

"You did _not_ bring a drug dealer in my head quarters," the Brigadier said flatly.

"He is a _former_ drug dealer. When I finally tracked him down in time and space in an Albuquerque hospital, the records of which the TARDIS had accessed, he'd just recovered from getting beaten up by a police officer despite the fact he was, in fact, utterly free of the chemicals in question. Now Brigadier, this is a young man whose trust issues with uniformed authorities appear to have some foundation. Which is exactly why I brought him here. Would you deny him the chance to change his life for the better?"

This was in all likelihood one of the more shameless manipulations the Doctor had indulged in, but the Brigadier could not deny there could a true core to it. Besides, given Professor Jones' fondness for mushrooms in all variations, he was reasonably sure Miss Grant's new husband and thus most likely Miss Grant herself would indulge in the occasional recreational drug now. There were few things the Brigadier detested more than people using double standards, and he did not want to use them himself.

"Very well," he said. "UNIT will employ him as your assistant on a temporary basis. But if he starts to abuse the position, I will hold you responsible, Doctor."

As it turned out, Jesse Pinkman actually did know his way around lab equipment, or so the Brigadier gathered from the fact that there were no requests from the Doctor to replace broken glass. On the other hand, the first time he accompagnied the Doctor on a mission involving a car chase turned into a disaster, because he had managed to get hold of Bessie's keys and wanted to drive, to the Doctor's indignation. The Brigadier, who hadn't managed to get on the driver's seat of this particular car ever since the Doctor had modified it, tried very hard not to be overtly amused. The fact that Pinkman, once he had discovered a portable radio, insisted on playing it at a volume which made it reverbarate throughout the entire Headquarters was less amusing. After that, the Brigadier decided to treat the American as he would any young recruit, which turned out to be a successful approach; young Pinkman muttered something about "stick-in-the-ass" but took to orders surprisingly well.

Then there was the time a temporally displaced Roman turned up in league with what appeared to be, to all intents and purposes, a red and a white dragon, even thought the Doctor claimed they were members of an alien species with an unpronouncable name. This was deemed "awesome" by Jesse Pinkman, a word that seemed to play a dominant role in 21st century American vocabulary. Given that the dragons breathed fire and UNIT, while able to evacuate its personnel in time, would have to rebuild its HQ for the third time in as many years, the Brigadier could think of other expressions, though he had to admit that the sight of the Doctor, once he'd managed to establish telepathic communication with one of the dragons, on the back of said creature riding through the air was something to behold. There was even a moment where the Brigadier wished to be young and undignified enough to do exactly what Jesse Pinkman did, which was to ask for the chance to fly on a dragon as well. But he knew that if he did that, he'd have to give permission to every UNIT soldier who asked, and the dragons were still a living fire hazard who really needed to return to their own world.

Once everything was settled and the TARDIS was back without the Roman and the dragons, the Brigadier found himself overhearing Pinkman demanding of the Doctor: "I don't get it. If you can go to cool planets like that all the time, why are you living here ?"

Listening in to other people's conversations was impolite and not something the Brigadier did usually, but this question touched upon something that was a UNIT security concern, to wit, the likelihood of the Doctor's departure, so he decided he was justified in remaining attentive.

"Some habits are hard to break," the Doctor said wryly. "Besides, there is something to be said for the company."

"That why you dress up like the Phantom of the Opera, too?" Pinkman asked. "Habit or something? Because dude, that green velvet is so gay."

"Given your inability to pick clothes your size even if the TARDIS provides them, I doubt you are in a position to give a fashion critique" the Doctor said acerbically.

The Brigadier had asked Mike Yates to keep an eye on Jesse Pinkman and to report any attempts of starting a drug trade, so he wasn't surprised Yates brought Pinkman along to an evening in the nearby pub where many a UNIT member relaxed, but what he hadn't expected was Pinkman wandering towards him, beer in his hand.

"So, like, dragons, huh? You know, until today I was wondering whether this was all an experiment by the government and you were all stooges playing along, but that shit was real."

The Brigadier supposed the US government hiring British actors to provide the background to an eleborate psychological experiment on a young former criminal was as likely an explanation as a time travelling alien taking an interest, so he couldn't fault the assumption per se, but he was intrigued by something else.

"If you thought we were experimenting on you" he asked, genuinely curious, "why did you make no attempt to escape?"

Jesse Pinkman shrugged. "It's not like I had something better going on," he muttered. "And hey, I do know how to work with a guy who thinks he's smarter than anyone else. And with a stick in the mud. It's just that they used to be the same guy, not two. Plus nobody has kicked the crap out of me yet."

"One would assume," the Brigadier said carefully, "the chance to help people to be also an incentive."

"There's more money in drugs," Jesse said matter-of-factly. "And more porn. When was the last time you got laid?"

At this point, the look the Brigadier used for impertinent young officers proved to be as efficient as ever.

"Okay, okay, sorry for asking. Is there anything you do, like, for fun?"

There were several possible answers to this, but the Brigadier settled for the one most likely to steer the conversation into another direction.

"Playing darts," he said. "How is your aim, Mr. Pinkman?"

"Seriously?" the American asked, but ended up playing; the Brigadier had yet to meet a young man able to resist the spirit of competition, especially against a superior. He took his time before winning. There was no need to show off, and it did relax Pinkman around him enough for the young man to declare the Brigadier was "an okay dude". Two days later, he even showed up in the Brigadier's office, with neither Yates or the Doctor anywhere in sight.

"You're not shooting people for quitting on the job here, are you?" Pinkman asked after some preliminaries.

"No, there is no lethal penalty for desertion. But you do surprise me, Mr. Pinkman. Given your reaction to the dragons, I thought you were enjoying your life here."

The young man bit his lower lip and leaned forward on the visitor's chair.

"It's cool," he said. "You're all, like, not crazy killers. A bit weird, but I guess that's because you're Brits. And yeah, flying was great. But - look, maybe I'm the dumbest dumbass who ever dumbed, but, like, I had this partner, the one I was telling you about. The guy like you and the Doctor put together. And he's sick. Like, really sick. We had this big argument, but the last time I saw him he came to the hospital and asked me to come back. So, like, he needs me, yo. And I keep thinking about that guy on his own without someone to have his back. Not like the Doctor has you guys here. I guess what I'm saying is that I get it now. Why the Doctor is here instead of on the planet the dragons came from all the time. He's your partner, right?"

"Partner" wasn't the term the Brigadier would have used, and he was certain the Doctor wouldn't. But there was something like anguish in Pinkman's blue eyes, and more importantly, a feeling the Brigadier knew very well and respected enormously. Loyalty.

"Wishing to support a friend in distress does you credit," the Brigadier replied without answering the question. "However, I was under the impression that your... previous situation... involved enough misery that several people urged the Doctor to save you from it. Given that, I find it unlikely he would return you there."

"Eh, I don't get beaten up _that_ often, and I'll be way more careful - hang on, who told the Doctor to save me? He never mentioned that!"

"I believe the names were Martha, Donna and Jack."

"Well, I know several Jacks," Jesse Pinkman said dubiously, "two from high school and one guy I, err, used to sell stuff to, but I don't think any of them ever met the Doctor. I never met a Martha, that's a way old fashioned name, I totally would remember. There was a nutty redhead named Donna who, like, slapped me, just a few weeks ago. She talked about spiders eating the world, so I guess she could know the Doctor. But she was such a ball buster, I thought she hated my guts."

Years of acquaintance with a man who did not, until robbed of his ability to travel for a while, experience time in a linear fashion had taught the Brigadier more than a few things.

"Let me talk to the Doctor," he said and proceeded to do just that, voicing his suspicion that the Doctor had picked up Jesse Pinkman a considerable time before he was supposed to save him, not after, which would also be before Pinkman had had the chance to meet at least two of the people who would alert the Doctor to his situation.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," the Brigadier said, "but wouldn't it, therefore, create a paradox if Mr. Pinkman were to remain here with us and would therefore never cause those messages to be sent?"

The Doctor frowned, cleared his throat, frowned again and replied unhappily: "It would indeed. But damn it, Brigadier, I can't return a young man to a life where he's bound to end up getting himself and other people killed!"

"That would be his decision, though. Doctor, every time I send a man on a mission, I know he might not come back. I don't take this lightly. But I did not force any of my people to work for UNIT. That was their choice. If they stop doing so, that would be their choice, too. It has to be. And if..." he stopped, paused, and then willed himself to continue, because it had to be said, "...if your own situation as UNIT's scientific advisor should change, given your altered circumstances, this will be your decision, too."

The Doctor regarded him thoughtfully, and the Brigadier recalled how, during his first few days in this current body, the Doctor had tried to escape in his blue box at every chance he got, held back by nothing but the fact the TARDIS did not function. He recalled furious arguments about Silurians. And he recalled the Doctor saying "what took you so long?" when the Brigadier arrived to save him and Miss Grant in the middle of a prison riot.

"You're not going sentimental on me, are you, Brigadier?"

"Most certainly not."

"Well," the Doctor said, "as it happens, you are right. We all have to make our own decisions. But in order to do that, one needs to have more than one option. If it is Jesse's wish, I'll return him to his home, but I'll come back some years later to see whether he still wants to stay there. " He paused, then added: "It is good - it is indeed essential to have the possibility to leave whenever one wishes. I always knew that. But what I have only learned during these last few years is that may be as important to have a place to return to. If one wishes."

"You're not going sentimental on me, are you, Doctor?" the Brigadier asked lightly, careful not to let the relief in his voice show.

"Most certainly not."


	5. Sarah Jane Smith

_**V. Sarah Jane Smith (ruling Bannerman Road)**_

After her latest encounter with the Trickster, which involved falling in love, the Doctor showing up at her wedding and her groom revealed as a dead man walking, Sarah Jane hadn't expected to see her old friend - indeed her oldest friend - again that soon. But there the Doctor was, in his pin-stripped suit, waiting for her when she'd just left Gita's flower shop, only ten days after holding Peter's dead body in her arms. The TARDIS wasn't anywhere in sight. For the Doctor, this qualified as a very discreet arrival, and made her suspect an impending peril to the rest of the world at once.

"What is the matter, Doctor?" she asked, concerned. He pulled a face.

"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Then he hugged her. He still seemed to be alone, which worried her; the Doctor never did well without a companion. She herself wouldn't want to know how she'd been coping with her recent experience without having her son Luke, not to mention Clyde and Rani.

As it turned out, the Doctor had something he wanted to ask her for. There had been, she learned, an assistant between Jo Grant and herself, one Jesse Pinkman, whom the Doctor had only recently caught up with again. Mr. Pinkman, it seemed, was still recovering from some horrendous experiences but had also expressed the wish to adopt two children affected by said experiences.

"Which is good!" said the Doctor. "He likes children! They like him! And I thought of you. What you said about Luke. Except I probably shouldn't have done that, thinking about Luke, because Luke is a teenager, and the TARDIS sometimes gets the wrong idea from my thoughts about where she needs to go."

Years of experience with various versions of the Doctor did come in handy.

"You mean you still can't drive," Sarah Jane said.

"We just arrived a few measly years later than Jesse had wanted to go in order to adopt the children," the Doctor said, embarrassed, "so Brock and Kiira were already teenagers. Brock being the son of Jesse's old girlfriend, and Kiira the daughter of a not-girlfriend, if I understood that correctly. But of someone he used to work with. Anyway, we didn't realize about the date until after they'd already spotted him, so I couldn't go back. Which means he hasn't adopted two small children, he's adopted two teenagers. But then I thought: Sarah! Sarah knows all about adopting teenagers!"

"I knew about adopting one and befriending three others, " Sarah Jane pointed out. "Who are in danger because of me on a regular basis, so I really don't believe this qualifies me as a family counselor, Doctor."

"They are in danger because of other people, which they would be even if you were nowhere nearby, only with you they have the chance to help save the world," the Doctor retorted, evidently taking the endangerment accusation somewhat personally. Not for the first time, Sarah Jane wondered whether, given his actual age, she'd been no more than a teenager to him when they had travelled together. Whether some decades made a difference in the Doctor's eyes at all.

"Be that as it may..."

"He's moving here, Sarah," the Doctor said. "To Bannerman Road. Him and the kids. To start a new life. You don't have to do anything but pay a visit now and then. Isn't that what human neighbours do? Now, Berekian neighbours are another matter, they eat each other, it's a territorial thing, but humans..."

"Doctor, did it occur to you that someone who has gone through 'horrendous experiences' should not move into one of the two focal points of alien invasions in Great Britain?"

"But that's what you do after bad experiences, Sarah," the Doctor said, and despite the easy grin, there was no laughter in his eyes, none at all. "You foil an invasion or two. Don't you?"

Knowing it was true about both of them, she gave in. Her only condition was that she wanted to meet Jesse Pinkman and his children on her own terms. If she let the Doctor introduce them, they'd be running from a Sontaran before they had finished saying hello.

Sarah Jane waited a few days, during which Luke reported that there were two new Americans at school and asked whether Mr. Smith could scan them. "Not everyone is an alien in disguise, Luke," Sarah Jane said.

"No. Some are just made by aliens, like me," he replied matter-of-factly. "Clyde says something is off about those two. The girl claims she's seen all the _Hunger Games_ films, and Clyde says they haven't even started shooting them yet."

"There is a reason for that," Sarah Jane said and explained about the latest results from the Doctor's notorious unreliability when it came to precise pick-up points in time travel. Luke, who valued not being known as the result of alien experimentation by everyone at school, promised to keep this information private.

When she spotted the Americans on the stoop in front of the house they'd moved in, Sarah Jane decided it was time to introduce herself. As she came closer, she realised they were having the most familiar of conversations; the dark-haired girl was insisting on not being a child anymore due to her mature age of fourteen. The boy grinned, and the man managed to look fond and exasperated at the same time. One could see he wasn't the biological father of either teenager immediately; he looked far too young, thirty at most, with dark blond hair and blue eyes. As she stepped closer, she could see there were some scars on his face; these were the only outward signs that her new neighbour had a past involving more than trouble with teenagers. When he shook her hand, she noticed he had a firm grip, but that at least one of his fingers had been broken and reset at some point.

They went through the rituals of introduction, exchanging their names and those of their children. She welcomed him in the neighborhood. If the Doctor had told him anything about her, he gave no sign of it. After extending a casual invitation for tea, she left to meet with Rani, who wanted to show her some of the articles she'd written for an internet blog. She was waylaid by Rani's mother Gita, who'd spotted her with Jesse Pinkman.

"Now there's a sight for sore eyes," Gita said, eager for gossip.

"Is he?" Sarah Jane asked teasingly. "I can't say I've noticed."

Gita tsked and mused aloud about tragically aborted weddings being no reason to spend the rest of one's life in celibacy. Rani, on the other hand, once she got Sarah Jane alone, was more interested in sharing that there had been a discussion at school about the likelihood of food poisoning in school meals, and the new American girl had insisted that her own mother had died of food poisoning, so she wasn't going to eat anything she hadn't bought and prepared herself. At which point her adopted brother had commented that _his_ mother had died of a gun shot by a guy she'd opened the door to when he asked for directions, but he still went out of the door when people rang, and would Kiira eat her school meal already.

"One dead mother in a family may be a coincidence," Rani said. "But two? Does Mr. Pinkman go about adopting orphans whose mothers got murdered? Who does that?"

"A good man, hopefully," Sarah Jane said and didn't know whether to be proud of Rani's accurate journalistic instincts or disconcerted that she would have to reveal what little she knew to Rani, too. Rani's eyes grew very round.

"So what _did_ Mr. Pinkman do before the Doctor brought him here?" she asked.

"Honestly, I have no idea," Sarah Jane replied. "But remember, it's important what he does _now_."

She was, admittedly, preaching what she herself did not feel. Curiosity was too engrained in her not to wonder. But the decades that separated her from Rani's age had taught her that sometimes, the past really _was_ better left undisturbed.

When Jesse Pinkman took her up on her invitation to tea, she made sure Luke took Brock and Kiira with him to his room to show off his video games before she went from casual conversation and banter about the virtues of porridge versus tacos to remarking: "Becoming a parent was the scariest thing I ever did. And I have seen wonders and terrors in my time..."

"That's right. Brock said Luke told him you were a journalist. That must have been tough," Jesse said. His eyes were guarded and gave nothing away.

"I am a journalist," Sarah Jane said lightly. "And yes, I've experienced a lot. But nothing to equal this. Being responsible for the life of another person, laying yourself open to loving them, it takes commitment and courage, not just once but every minute of every day. I don't think I could have done it at your age. You have my admiration."

Jesse took another of her biscuits. They had been intended for Brock, Kiira and Luke, and the way he ate them, with the same artless hunger Luke and Clyde did, made her wonder again how old he really was.

"I don't know ," he said, and there was nothing young in his voice. "See, that was the only thing that ever made sense to me. Being there for a kid. Protecting it. I'm not saying kids are sweet all the time, or that they can't drive you crazy. But still. It just - it makes sense to me. To do it. Not much else in my life worked out, and you know, I used to think that was because of - well, someone else. But not anymore."

Sarah Jane poured some new tea into his cup and poured herself another cup as well. She remembered waiting for the Doctor to return after he had left her at Edinburgh instead of Croydon. Remembered waiting, cursing him for cutting her off from the way her life was supposed to go. Leaving her. Until one day, when she decided to stop waiting and to move forward instead.

"Plus he's dead," Jesse said. "Really dead now. And I'm not. Brock is not. Kiira is not. I just thought - there's a lot of crap I've done, and I can't save the world or anything like that do make up for it. But I can make it better for Brock and Kiira."

"You're a wise man," Sarah Jane said, and meant it. For the rest of the visit, she chatted with him about ways to help Brock and Kiira to adjust to the British school system, extra lessons, and destinations for weekend trips that weren't too expensive. He mentioned having been in Britain before - "briefly, a long time ago -", somewhere in the Sussex countryside, and she briefly wondered whether he knew Alistair before deciding that was a question for a later time. He asked her about the Loch Ness monster, and she caught herself just in time to realise he'd been joking.

When he left, Brock and Kiira in tow, she decided to give him a hint before saying goodbye. Sooner or later, he'd discover they had at least one mutual aquaintance anyway.

"You still may, you know," Sarah Jane said. "Save the world, that is. Such things have been known to happen in Bannerman Road."

He looked quizzical, as if trying to decide whether or not she was being serious.

A week later, when the Slitheen invaded and kidnapped Luke, Brock, Clyde, Rani and Kiira, somewhere between Sarah Jane using her sonic lipstick to lock his car from keeping Jesse from following her into battle and Jesse hotwiring it to join forces with her anyway, he found out.


End file.
